


Sister Cities

by Ferith12



Series: Sister Cities [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU
Genre: Gen, Personification, Run away analogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:51:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6996532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham and Bludhaven are sister cities, but they aren't the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sister Cities

They say that Gotham and Bludhaven are sister cities. Generally, when people hear this term, they would imagine the two cities being similar, twins perhaps, or the sort of sisters that may be different in a few ways, but share almost everything in common.

  
But of course everyone knows that Gotham and Bludhaven aren’t like that. Gotham is a scary place, scary and powerful and magnificent. Everyone has heard of Gotham. Bludhaven is smaller. Nothing of importance to the outside world is done there. Nobody cares about Bludhaven.

  
And so if people hear that Gotham and Bludhaven are sister cities, they don’t think of them as equals. Gotham and Bludhaven share some traits, most notably their rediculously high crime rates and close proximity to each other. When people who don’t know better think about Bludhaven as Gotham’s sister, they think of her as being the younger. Small, following in the shadow of her sister. She is Gotham, stripped of her riches and power and insanity. But it’s not quite like that either.

  
Gotham is a queen, strong and cruel and beautiful. If she had a father he would be a king, mighty and ruler of a vast land, rich, and above all, heartless. He would be the sort of king to raise his daughter to be queen after him, giving her everything she could wish for, so that she became spoilt, but being strict and unloving, teaching her to be sharp of mind, and, above all, unyielding.

  
Gotham would be the princess and then queen. But Bludhaven would be the product of this king’s one-night stand with some palace maid.

  
Bludhaven does not have Gotham’s sense of royalty, though they are both equally belonging to the king’s blood. She is humble, expecting little and demanding less. But she is never meek. She has her sister’s strength of will but not her pride. She is poorer, shabbier, dirtier, uglier, fiercer.

  
Gotham is a queen, with power that has turned to tyranny, and wisdom that has turned to madness, though at times it seems, even now, to be no less wise. Above all she is proud. Proud of her heights of riches and her depths of poverty. She is proud of her young human princes, her prattling socialites, drunk on money that seems to sprout from nowhere, her keen businessmen, pouring more and more wealth into her. Most of all she loves her madmen, the killers that flock her streets with all their separate quirks, who kill because they can.

  
Bludhaven does not choose favorites. She welcomes all to herself and makes them hers. But she does not protect. She is a haven, but not a shield, a home, but not a fortress.  
Bludhaven is more harsh and less cruel, more broken and less twisted.

  
Most of all, Bludhaven is a land of outcasts, of the downtrodden, those unwanted by her proud sister. She does not offer hope. She is a land of darkness, less dramatic than Gotham, but more real. She is a land of destitution, no one knows the mortality rate of Bludhaven, but it is exceedingly high. She is a land, where, despite being technically part of the USA, people somehow manage to die of poverty. She is a city with crime so rampant, that very, very few people over the age of fourteen are not criminals to some degree, and many below that age are as well.

  
But Bludhaven does offer… existence. Belonging. Even home. She does not discriminate, does not judge. She only asks one thing of her people: that the persevere.

  
Bludhaven is a land of immigrants, or she is a receptacle for the refuse other cities have rejected. Either way she is not kind, but she is never cruel either. Bludhaven is not a land of hope, but it is a place of new beginnings. She is the step sister to Gotham. More hidden and no less cut off from the rest of the world, she is less powerful but no less strong.


End file.
